Economy Act
The Economy Act of 1933, officially titled the Act of March 20, 1933 (ch. 3, ; ), is an Act of Congress that cut the salaries of federal workers and reduced benefit payments to veterans, moves intended to reduce the federal deficit in the United States.Olson, James Stuart. Historical Dictionary of the Great Depression, 1929-1940. Santa Barbara, calif.: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2001. ISBN 0313306184 The Economy Act of 1933 is different from the Economy Act of 1932. The Economy Act of 1932 was signed in the final days of the Hoover administration in February 1933.Lee, Mordecai. Institutionalizing Congress and the Presidency: The U.S. Bureau of Efficiency, 1916-1933. College Station, Tex.: Texas A&M University Press, 2006. ISBN 1585445487 This sometimes leads to confusion between the two pieces of legislation. The Hoover-sponsored bill establishes the purchasing authority of the federal government, and is still in force as of 2009.Tomanelli, Steven N. Appropriations Law: Principles and Practice. Vienna, Va.: Management Concepts, 2003. ISBN 1567261213 Enactment As Governor of New York, Franklin D. Roosevelt had campaigned for the Presidency, in part, on a pledge to balance the federal budget.Schlesinger, Arthur M. The Age of Roosevelt: The Crisis of the Old Order, 1919-1933. Paperback ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1957. ISBN 0618340858Botti, Timothy J. Envy of the World: A History of the U.S. Economy and Big Business. New York: Algora Publishing, 2006. ISBN 0875864325 On March 10, 1933, six days after his inauguration, Roosevelt submitted legislation to Congress which would cut $500 million ($8.181 billion in 2009 dollars) from the $3.6 billion federal budget by eliminating government agencies, reducing the pay of civilian and military federal workers (including members of Congress), and slashing veterans' benefits by 50 percent.Kennedy, David M. Freedom From Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007. ISBN 0195038347Zelizer, Julian E. "The Forgotten Legacy of the New Deal: Fiscal Conservatism and the Roosevelt Administration, 1933-1938." Presidential Studies Quarterly. 30:2 (June 2000); Ippolito, Dennis S. Why Budgets Matter: Budget Policy and American Politics. State Collete, Penn.: Penn State Press, 2004. ISBN 0271022604 Veterans benefits constituted a quarter of the federal budget at the time. The Act was written primarily by Lewis Douglas, Roosevelt's Director of the Budget, and Grenville Clark, a private attorney.Northrup, Cynthia Clark. The American Economy: A Historical Encyclopedia. Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC-CLIO, 2003. ISBN 1576078663Stott, Kelly McMichael. "FDR, Lewis Douglas, and the Raw Deal." The Historian. 63:1 (September 2000). The Act faced stiff opposition in the Congress. On June 17, 1932, the Bonus Army (about 17,000 World War I veterans and 26,000 of their family members and affiliated groups) had established a Hooverville shanty town on the Anacostia Flats area of Washington, D.C.Dickson, Paul and Allen, Thomas B. The Bonus Army: An American Epic. New York: Walker and Company, 2004. ISBN 0802714404 On July 28, the U.S. 12th Infantry Regiment commanded by General Douglas MacArthur and the 3rd Cavalry Regiment (supported by six tanks) commanded by Major George S. Patton attacked and set afire the Bonus Army's encampment, injuring hundreds and killing several veterans and civilians. Congress was forced to flee the city for several days after outraged veterans ringed the United States Capitol. The political backlash caused by the attack on the Bonus Army led to the defeat of several members of Congress that fall. Many in Congress, remembering the incident, did not want to support the Economy Act. The House Democratic Caucus even refused to support the bill. Heavily opposed by liberal Democrats (92 of whom voted against it), the bill passed the House of Representatives only with heavy support of Republicans and conservative Democrats. The bill easily passed the Senate only because the Senate Democratic Caucus had scheduled a vote on the popular Cullen-Harrison Act (amending the Volstead Act to allow the manufacture and sale of beer and light wines) immediately after the vote on the Economy Act—encouraging Senators to cut short debate and pass the bill in order to move on the popular Cullen-Harrison Act. The President signed the Economy Act into law on March 20, 1933. Provisions and impact The Economy Act cut federal spending by $243 million, not the $500 million requested by the President. This aspect of the Act proved deflationary as the government purchased fewer goods and services, and led to a worsening of the Great Depression.Schlesinger, Jr., Arthur M. The Age of Roosevelt, Vol. 2: The Coming of the New Deal. Paperback ed. New York: Mariner Books, 2003. (Originally published 1958.) ISBN 0618340866Gould, Lewis L. The Most Exclusive Club: A History of the Modern United States Senate. New York: Basic Books, 2006. ISBN 0465027792; phillips, Ronnie J. The Chicago Plan and New Deal Banking Reform. Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 1995. ISBN 1563244691. Balancing the budget was, at the time, considered by most economists to be inflationary, and the effects of the Economy Act were unexpected. See: Chafe, William Henry. The Achievement of American Liberalism: The New Deal and Its Legacies. New York: Columbia University Press, 2002. ISBN 0231112122 The Economy Act also gave the President limited authority to reorganize executive branch agencies to achieve efficiency, but this power was not utilized much before the Act expired in 1935. By March 3, 1935, Roosevelt had issued 27 reorganization orders, most of them minor in nature.Calabresi, Steven G. and Yoo, Christopher S. The Unitary Executive: Presidential Power from Washington to Bush. New haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2008. ISBN 0300121261 Roosevelt did not engage in extensive reorganization efforts until the passage of the Reorganization Act of 1939 gave him that authority.Karl, Barry Dean. Executive Reorganization and Reform in the New Deal: The Genesis of Administrative Management, 1900–1939. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1963. Its most important provisions, however, repealed all federal laws regarding veterans' benefits.Keene, Jennifer D. Doughboys, the Great War, and the Remaking of America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003. ISBN 0801874467''United States v. Jackson,'' 302 U.S. 628 (1938); "History of Presumptions of Service Connection." Institute of Medicine. No date. Accessed 2009-04-18. Section 17 of the Act declared: "All public laws granting medical or hospital treatment, domiciliary care, compensation, and other allowances, pension, disability allowance, or retirement pay to veterans and the dependents of veterans of ... the World War, ... are hereby repealed, and all laws granting or pertaining to yearly renewable term insurance are hereby repealed. ..."Economy Act of March 20, 1933, Sec. 17. However, the Act allowed the president to re-establish these benefits for two years via executive order at levels the President deemed appropriate.Weir, Margaret; Orloff, Ann Shola; and Skocpol, Theda. The Politics of Social Policy in the United States. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1988. ISBN 0691028419 Benefits for non-disabled veterans fell more than 40 percent, creating deep resentment among former soldiers and officers and leading to the establishment of the Veterans of Foreign Wars as a major force in American politics.Ortiz, Stephen R. "The New Deal for Veterans: The Economy Act, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, and the Origins of New Deal Dissent." Journal of Military History. 70:2 (April 2006). The Economy Act caused a second Bonus Army to form. But Roosevelt handled this protest much more carefully than Hoover had: His administration set up an encampment for the protesters (albeit too far from the Capitol to make their protest effective), prohibited loitering in the District of Columbia (forcing the marchers to stay outside the city), sent Eleanor Roosevelt to deliver food and medicine to the marchers and hear their grievances, and encouraged the ex-servicemen to seek work with the Civilian Conservation Corps (which many did).Lisio, Donald J. The President and Protest: Hoover, MacArthur, and the Bonus Riot. 2d ed. New York: Fordham Univeristy Press, 1994. ISBN 0823215725 Veterans nonetheless sued to have their benefits restored. In Lynch v. United States, 292 U.S. 571 (1934) and United States v. Jackson, 302 U.S. 628 (1938), the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that Congress had violated federal law in eliminating certain insurance guarantees formerly offered to veterans by the War Risk Insurance Act (as amended December 24, 1919; Chapter 16, Section 12, 41 Stat. 371), and these benefits were restored.Lynch v. United States, 292 U.S. 571 (1934); ''United States v. Jackson, 302 U.S. 628 (1938); McKenna, Marian Cecilia. Franklin Roosevelt and the Great Constitutional War: The Court-Packing Crisis of 1937. New York: Fordham University Press, 2002. ISBN 0823221547 The Economy Act had little effect on either the federal deficit or the economy. Spending in other areas rose so substantially that it dwarfed the cuts imposed by the Economy Act. The benefit cuts also did not last. In June 1933 Roosevelt restored $50 million in pension payments, and Congress added another $46 million more.[http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,748895,00.html "Economy's End." Time. August 26, 1935.] In January 1934, Roosevelt added another $21 million for veterans whose disabilities were service-connected but not service-caused. And in March 1934 Congress overrode Roosevelt's veto and added another $90 million in veterans benefits and $120 million to federal workers' salaries. On October 1934, Roosevelt restored $60 million in federal salary cuts, and restored cuts to veterans who had served in the Spanish-American War, Philippine-American War, and Boxer Rebellion. Notes Category:1933 in law Category:New Deal Category:United States federal defense and national security legislation fr:Economy Act